I’ve been playing a lot of Dungeons & Dragons lately. You might have suspected if you saw my current Twitter account icon.
Since the Pandemic started, my campaigns have all taken place over the Internet. The way most people play D&D over the Internet is through a site called Roll20, which gives you easy access to your character information, maps, and a bunch of other things.
Roll20 is a very powerful website, free to use, and…a little fiddly. If you’re a GM (Game Master) for a game on Roll20, and you’ve already gone through the in-editor tutorials and tried things out for yourself, there’s a couple of steps I’ve found that you can follow to make the experience better for your players.
1. Visible Character Sheets
I’ve found it helpful for each player to be able to see, not just their own character sheet, but the character sheets of all the other players in the game.
When, as a GM, you first create a character sheet for a player, you need to set both who can see that sheet, and who that sheet is controlled and editable by.
These are modified by clicking the character name to open the sheet, then clicking the edit Edit button, and finally going to the In Player’s Journals and Can Be Edited & Controlled By sections, respectively.
Most GMs start out by setting both fields only to the individual player who owns the character.
But if, instead, you set In Player’s Journals to the special All Players option, that character will be visible to all existing players, including the controlling player, and any new players you add, without any further work from you. That’s what I would recommend.
2. Visible Token Labels
Now that you’ve made the character sheets, you or the controlling player can drag those character tokens on to the current map page. (Be sure to start the drag in the character’s name, not the icon.)
By default, this doesn’t show the name of the character, either to you or to the players.
You can change this, first, by clicking the token on the map to select it, then clicking the gear icon.
Under the Basic tab, in the Name section, there is a checkbox labeled Show nameplate? If you check that, the character’s name will be visible to both you and the controlling player.
If you want the label to be visible to everyone, which I would recommend, go to the Advanced tab and, in the Name section, check the See checkbox.
Note the players can’t set these values for themselves. You need to do it as the GM, for every dragged-out token, individually.
Unfortunately, these changes aren’t “sticky”. Editor’s note: you can make these changes permanent, see my newer post for details. If someone drags out a second token for a character, say, on a new map page, these changes have to be made all over again. That’s annoying!
Instead, select the tokens that you’ve already edited and that you want to appear on another page, and copy them. Go to the second page, and then paste the tokens there. This way, you’ll have the tokens available on the second page, with all your changes.
I hope this is helpful!
Weaponized Fluff 